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Currently I'm playing Skyrim, which according to many is better than sliced bread. I never considered sliced bread all that great, I like knives and to cut stuff myself, hence I was of course sceptical about Skyrim. Especially after my Oblivion-debacle.

12 hours in and I'm still undecided about what to make of it. I'm still trying to play a bard (and got a mod that allows playing instruments). The premise of elder scrolls games holds true: you can play what you want, as long as you play a sociopathic mass murderer with kleptomanic tendencies (and former convict).

The levelling system is still unintuitive and doesn't get explained at all. Enemies in the wilderness still level along with the player, which again leads to stupid situations when the player makes the 'mistake' of levelling 'too fast'. The UI and specifically the inventory is simply appaling on PC. After 2 hours of playing I spent an hour searching for and installing UI-mods, otherwise I'd have stopped right there.

NPC look a bit more like people and a bit less like puppets and the strange speechcraft-minigame was gotten rid of. That means that interaction with NPC is now fairly limited and spending all that much time in cities tends to get boring.

I killed my first dragon with my bard/archer and did some quests for random people. Now I'm in Solitude doing quests for the bard's college but haven't learned to learn an instrument yet. Hmmm...

It's the gamiest game I've ever played. Gone is the pseudo realism of the previous game and in comes a focus on earning XP through takedowns, endless 'challenges' such as kill 5 dogs with a shotgun (you haven't got access to the shotgun yet so there is one at the entrance to the challenge), kill as many mooks in a row as possible at location X and get onto an in-game leaderboard (current leader [UBI] John - 210 kills), etc etc.

Incredibly, travel is even more difficult than in the previous game - there are no checkpoints, but you run into a patrolling jeep every 80 yards or so. I don't know if these respawn. If you bypass them by going off road, the undergrowth is filled with deadly animals, so you constantly have a snake wrapped around your ankle or a leopard attached to your forearm.

The radio tower mechanic, where you uncover the map by activating radio towers is weird. They are not guarded and you just climb up a ladder to do this, so what's the point?

Lots of fetch quests - for example the vaunted hallucinogenic trip through the cave is only in the game so they could put it in a video. You don't actually do anything in the quest except go to A and come back again.

There are a billion messages popping up telling you what to do next.

All in all, it is disappointing. It may get better when I start attacking stuff. To date I have only had one chuckle when the game prompted me to shoot the lock off a cage containing an animal, which would then wreak havoc in the enemy camp. Unfortunately the animal was an emu or something equally ineffectual, and was taken down with one burst from an AK47. My own demise followed soon after.

There also seems to be a fair bit of misogyny in, of all places, the descriptions of the weapons and game items - this is a game that is aimed squarely at the "14-24 year old dumb fuck" gamer and has pretty much ditched the more thoughtful aspects of the first in favour of kerrrazy antics and fetch quest busywork.

It's the gamiest game I've ever played. Gone is the pseudo realism of the previous game and in comes a focus on earning XP through takedowns, endless 'challenges' such as kill 5 dogs with a shotgun (you haven't got access to the shotgun yet so there is one at the entrance to the challenge), kill as many mooks in a row as possible at location X and get onto an in-game leaderboard (current leader [UBI] John - 210 kills), etc etc.

Incredibly, travel is even more difficult than in the previous game - there are no checkpoints, but you run into a patrolling jeep every 80 yards or so. I don't know if these respawn. If you bypass them by going off road, the undergrowth is filled with deadly animals, so you constantly have a snake wrapped around your ankle or a leopard attached to your forearm.

The radio tower mechanic, where you uncover the map by activating radio towers is weird. They are not guarded and you just climb up a ladder to do this, so what's the point?

Lots of fetch quests - for example the vaunted hallucinogenic trip through the cave is only in the game so they could put it in a video. You don't actually do anything in the quest except go to A and come back again.

There are a billion messages popping up telling you what to do next.

All in all, it is disappointing. It may get better when I start attacking stuff. To date I have only had one chuckle when the game prompted me to shoot the lock off a cage containing an animal, which would then wreak havoc in the enemy camp. Unfortunately the animal was an emu or something equally ineffectual, and was taken down with one burst from an AK47. My own demise followed soon after.

There also seems to be a fair bit of misogyny in, of all places, the descriptions of the weapons and game items - this is a game that is aimed squarely at the "14-24 year old dumb fuck" gamer and has pretty much ditched the more thoughtful aspects of the first in favour of kerrrazy antics and fetch quest busywork.

Ouch, that sounds pretty terrible. I had hight hopes for Far Cry 3 being the best action title of the year.

In between Skyrim I also play some F1 2012, which is a pretty neat racing game. I failed miserably in Monza at first, forcing me to get into learning the proper racing lines again. Funny enough I know Monza quite well, since I raced there in so many other games from Geoff Crammondīs F1GP from 1992 to Gran Turismo 5. Need some more time to get used driving a F1 car, since itīs quite a different beast in terms of when and where to break and accelerate. So far thumbs up, since itīs the kind of racing game I like in being a halfway decent sim without being overly brutal in terms of difficulty.

Skyrim... I was full of RAGE yesterday, when a bugged quest either didn't continue past a certain poing or outright crashed the game 5 times in a row. In my 4th attempt I though I finally went through, hit quicksave... and quicksave crashed the game

I was already making a point that the Walking Dead 'gameplay' is too repetitive and the story not strong enough to warrant playing the same episode multiple times. Skyrim's narrative is nowhere near strong enough to justify force-fed exposition 5 times in a row because the questline is bugged.

For a game that's out that long and had it's share of patches, the amount of bugs in Skyrim is staggering. In some areas hitting quicksave will crash to desktop. Sometimes my arrows hit so hard, enemies clip through walls into the next room. Third-person view (the way I prefer to play Skyrim, since the floating FP camera with weapons attached to it makes me feel uncomfortable) showcases just how often you can sink halfway into a solid rock while descending a mountain. NPC are teleporting around and having occasional troubles finding their way around a tree.

Absolute lowpoint in terms of quests so far was one infiltrating an embassy. No spoilers here but this mission just showed how bad stealth works, since I was spotted out of sight just because I accidentally hit control and got out of 'stealth-mode', making every guard within 2 mile radius immediately aware of my position. But it's ok, I just ran to the next door and as soon as I was in the house no sign of alarm and the next scripted story exposition could take place.

My opinion of FC3 is probably unfairly influenced by FC2 and my disappointment that it wasn't built upon. Early in the game I came across a crossroads where two trucks had crashed. They were full of gunmen, and one was transporting a cage with a bear in it which had broken loose. This melee was joined by 5 or 6 komodo dragons which had crawled up from the river to join the fight and everybody was firing wildly at everything else. Some people will love this, but I hated it in the context of FC2.

I still haven't really tried shooting anyone much. So maybe it will be brilliant when that starts. I haven't been back since though.

XCOM - 8 hours is incredible. Glad to hear you are enjoying it. It has its faults for sure, but it makes up for them quite a bit.

Skyrim - I think you have to be predisposed to this type of game in order to overlook the flaws, because there are a lot of them. Third person is just awful...

I've decided to fold and buy Hitman: Absolution, as the series is probably my favourite, and the story seems to grab me more than most.

Literally just completed the first level- first impressions, it *does* feel like Hitman. It's more accessable, and the shooting mechanics are definitely better. He actually controls like a trained professional. I'm also grateful they got the regular guy back to voice 47.

I'll leave it at that, as I really wanna get back to it. I just hope it has as many memorable scenarios as the previous games.

I'm curious how you'll like Absolution as a fan of the series. I only played a bit of Blood Money, which was great but a bit too clumsy for my taste (47 felt as graceful as a combine harvester). I'm still torn regarding Absolution, there were parts I absolutely loved but also enough parts that were pretty bad.

Continued my adventures in Skyrim. So far I always thought being parts of the Stormcloaks was the 'normal' way to play the game, but now I'm not sure anymore. More than 20 hours in I haven't picked sides yet and am more inclined to help the Empire to weed out those rebels. The Stormcloaks just strike me as a bunch of racist, bigoted lunatics who want to get rid of everything living in Skyrim that doesn't look like a Nord. For all it's faults I find the Empire more appealing, which strikes me as being a bit like the Roman Empire, but minus slavery and being forward-thinking rather than the backwards-mentality of the Stormcloaks.

I still rely on archery, mainly because I can't take the melee system serious after playing the Souls games. Destruction magic is out of the question because it doesn't go well with sneaking in the shadows. Too much fireworks going on.

It occurs to me how few RPG have non-combat skills. Even the "non-combat" skills in Skyrim are just there to improve the battle prowess of the character by being able to use better weapons and armor. I can buy houses and stuff but can't do all that much with them apart from storing my weapons, armor and other stuff that directly or indirectly helps in combat. Mount & Blade offers just so much more in terms of freedom, allowing to play as a merchant or brewer as well as a soldier or knight. If only the quests in M&B weren't so generic...

Oh dear. Just read the Hitman:Absolution review on here, and whilst it doesn't detract my enjoyment from it thus far, I can't help but agree with many of it's points.

My impressions, though; Music isn't as good as the three previous games (can't speak for the first game, never played it). Silent Assassin's music, for example, was so good, I'm gonna give it another playthrough in the future. The music from the previous two games were not only great, but fit the two, very different, approaches to the gameplay/ narrative combination (Contracts, whilst being the worst game so far, was still a good Hitman game, and had the wonderfully surreal synopsis of most of the missions being the flashbacks of a dying 47- the visuals and music reflected this brilliantly). Which also brings me onto the plot- the cutscenes are better made than any of the previous games so far, it's just a shame the story, thus far, isn't very good. 47 has already been shown to have empathy, after the events of Silent Assassin had him rescue the priest who gave him a life and a purpose away from the killing 47 briefly turned his back on.

The levels seem much smaller so far than previous games, I'm not sure it was a good idea to split each level into so many sections.

I will also be starting the game again on hard mode. You get *way* too many perks playing on normal mode, and I don't like it.

I am really liking it overall, though. On top of my previous post on the game, the levels are so full of life (aside from the opening level, I also really enjoyed the tension of a part where you have to evade the police and escape on a train, by blending into the crowd). Everywhere you go, there is someone talking to someone else. Blake Dexter is also a deliciously awful bad guy. It's nice there's finally a memorable enemy that is the focus of the game alongside Agent 47.

Overall, it's a lot of fun, but I'm not as grabbed by it as any of the previous games. I just hope it can fit a few memorable levels into it, as that is what a Hitman game is to me.

Li-Ion- if you enjoyed Blood Money despite the clumsiness of controlling baldy, I think you'd still get a kick from the two games before that. Contracts, despite my thinking of it as being the worst of the games I've played, oddly has the most memorable "hits" in it. Particular highlights include The Meat King, and a level where you have to save someone from being used as a human target in a hunt by a hunting club..

EDIT: This is going to be my last comment on the game, as I would like to use the rare opportunity of my buying a new game (and one that is part of a series that has been a huge part of my gaming life) to write a feature or review on it when I've completed it, something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

I'm up to the orphanage level, and I can't believe that no one has mentioned the opening to this. I won't go into it, for fear of spoiling it for others, but I haven't had a game impact me so much since the end of Red Dead Redemption. It's only a very short, barely interactive segment before the level starts properly, but it's really lovely. Turns out that Agent 47 isn't just an amoral asshole, after all. Possible gaming moment of the year.

Mount & Blade offers just so much more in terms of freedom, allowing to play as a merchant or brewer as well as a soldier or knight. If only the quests in M&B weren't so generic...

Hoorah! M&B is the pinnacle

I've actually coded some quests in M&B and tbh there is not a lot you can do except send people off to fight other people, deliver a letter, or gather some resources. The dialogue system is so clunky, and the first-person mechanics of the game really only support fighting, so it is pretty limited.

The most elaborate thing I had was a quest where a village girl eloped with a neighbouring boy, and there was a small moral dimension where you could take her back and ruin her dreams, or leave her there and have the village elder lecture you about rural depopulation and not being able to survive if all their daughters could run off to some far away village etc. Exciting, huh? One of the outcomes resulted in you massacring the entire wedding party, which was just completely out of character if you were playing a good guy.

EDIT: This is going to be my last comment on the game, as I would like to use the rare opportunity of my buying a new game (and one that is part of a series that has been a huge part of my gaming life) to write a feature or review on it when I've completed it, something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

The most elaborate thing I had was a quest where a village girl eloped with a neighbouring boy, and there was a small moral dimension where you could take her back and ruin her dreams, or leave her there and have the village elder lecture you about rural depopulation and not being able to survive if all their daughters could run off to some far away village etc. Exciting, huh? One of the outcomes resulted in you massacring the entire wedding party, which was just completely out of character if you were playing a good guy.

That already sounds awesome! Just wish there were some more diverse missions in M&B. I was just today discussing with my cousin that the main reason we have so much violence in video games seems to be that a system based on violence apparently is much easier to code than one on social interaction

My flight go cancelled today due to snowstorm, going to fly (hopefully) hopefully. But that left me with some time at home to try Mark of the Ninja and so far it's really, REALLY seriously good.